Eyewitness 1945: 'Nothing permanent ... but Roosevelt'
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In April 1945 the end of World War II in Europe was in sight.
Hitler was believed to be cornered in Berlin, and American and Soviet troops were fighting their way toward a meet-up at the Elbe River in central Germany.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had begun his fourth term as president a month earlier. During the previous four years, he had transformed himself from a self-described "Dr. New Deal" into "Dr. Win the War."
Then on April 12 he was gone. Doctors said the cause of his unexpected death was a cerebral hemorrhage -- massive bleeding in his brain.
"What's the gag?" was the baffled reaction of one disbelieving patron at a Fourth Avenue cafe in Downtown Pittsburgh when the word spread that Thursday afternoon.
"Outside, the voices of the city became hollow rumblings ... that familiar sounds assume in the wake of tragic news, such as that of a fire, or flood or declaration of war," wrote Charles F. Danver in the April 14 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Danver was the author of a longtime feature column called "Pittsburghesque."
"The few lads at the bar, loud-spoken and merry a moment before, gradually melted away," he wrote. "Soon the bartender was left all alone, moodily washing his glasses ..."
Music in some of the city's nightclubs and restaurants stopped and the musicians were sent home, he reported. "Other places continued their music, but the instrumentalists were told to play on 'sweet' numbers ... and with no singing."
Many Pittsburghers took the news personally.
"When the news was announced in the Terrace Room [of what is now the Omni William Penn Hotel], a woman who was dining there with her husband broke into tears," Danver wrote. "Here and in other places there were such expressions as ... 'I feel as if my own father had passed away.'"
First Published February 21, 2010 12:00 am
